What's the point?

(portalnovosti.com)

Will traffic through the Strait of Hormuz still start this month? Will the war in Iran end at least by the end of June? Will Israel then launch a major ground offensive on Gaza? And what interests us most: will Jesus Christ return to Earth, and this year?

Before we find out where all these questions come from, it's time to offer the answers. Well, in order: he won't, he will, the chances are 50/50. And as for the Son of God, the chances of seeing him are currently about four percent. Not much, but not exactly low for someone who hasn't spoken to us in almost two millennia.

Okay, now for the questions. These, among thousands of others, come to us from Polymarket, a growing online betting platform. Sorry, what kind of betting, that's called a bit more polished now: prediction market, please. We offer good old sports matches, but we also have bets on the menu - excuses, predictions - on the outcomes of current wars, the beginnings of future ones, the inflation rate, the bursting of the artificial intelligence bubble.

Will Greta Thunberg be arrested by the end of June? Yes, 68 percent. What will be the highest temperature in Shanghai? Who will win Eurovision? Percentages change in real time: check, refresh. Choose, bet. No pause.

The model itself is actually extremely simple: anyone can place any bet, anyone can react to it, and it works with cryptocurrencies, which means we participate anonymously. The thing was conceived in 2020 by a certain Shayne Coplan, then just 21 years old, a programmer from New York and a sworn libertarian, one of those who believe that we can turn anything we think of into a financial transaction. And his faith paid off.

Polymarket, admittedly, operated in a gray area of ​​the law for the first few years, and American regulators even slapped it with some fines, but then 2024 came and everything changed. On the eve of the presidential election mainstream The media unanimously announced a close race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the polls gave them equal chances, and while the votes were being counted, reporters still insisted on uncertainty. Only Polymarket sent clear signals from the very beginning of the campaign that Trump was winning this easily.

And that was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. The re-elected president immediately relaxed the regulations on online gambling, and Coplan's company in turn installed his son, Donald Trump Jr., as a special advisor. Trump Sr. sees a good business opportunity and is now working on launching his own platform, expect it soon.

And the exemplary and reputable Bloomberg, meanwhile, reports that Shayne Coplan became the youngest billionaire in history last year, at least among those who did not inherit their wealth, but earned it. The media is writing about what his earnings mean for our future, admittedly, with less enthusiasm these days. But who is still listening? mainstream media, they didn't know how to predict elections anyway. That's why Polymarket now plans to take their place: the company's business model goes beyond betting and is already branding itself as news 2.0.

For a daily dose of news, we will soon be visiting Polymarket's website and its website. prediction market competitors, among which the strongest platform is Kalshi, which is a bit more conservative: they still avoid betting on wars and proudly advertise the advertising slogan "We do not deal in the death market."

Nice. But they are all, fundamentally, driven by the same logic that simply says put your money where your mouth is: unlike all sorts of biased media controlled by liberal elites, here the predictions are made by real people and, more importantly, they guarantee those predictions with their own money.

So, if the majority is betting that there will be no traffic through Hormuz by the end of the month, then there will be none. If the majority says that Jesus, unlike Trump, will not return to us, then God is not helping Jesus. If the majority is not sure whether the Israeli army will move into Gaza, then the Palestinians are left to fear for their lives.

To you and me, this may sound abnormal or at least immoral - all these bets on death, slaughter, destruction - but that's because we are behind in the age of professional journalism, peace activism, so-called ethics, and similar, strange, harder-to-cash phenomena. Coplan's vision has no time for us.

According to Coplan himself, it relies on the ideas of the prophet of neoliberalism, Friedrich Hayek, but also of another, lesser-known economist, Robin Hanson, the creator of the concept futarchiaAnd futarchy, thank you for asking, would mean the rule of betting shops.

No, I'm not kidding: Professor Hanson launched the idea about 20 years ago to update our outdated democracy by making the most important decisions in much the same way that Polymarket today predicts natural disasters, the date of the start of World War III, and the result of the first round. playoffa between the Lakers and the Rockets.

So, if you have a hundred or so crypto-somethings on hand, then put, say, 35 on banning abortion, then another 25 on introducing the death penalty and - just check how much you have left - great, let all 40 go to developing nuclear weapons, fuck it. And if you're not really into cryptocurrencies, I don't know what to tell you. Find the nearest nuclear shelter.

The idea, as you can see, is effective and logical, so much so that the New York Times itself, more exemplary than even Bloomberg, declared the futarchy its own. buzzword 2008. Just at the beginning of the great recession that Hayek's and Hanson's world markets, admittedly, didn't even suspect, but okay, we won't nitpick now...

And why should we, when Coplan's business vision is developing brilliantly? Goldman Sachs, the New York investment giant that created and profited from the 2008 recession, now includes indicators from Polymarket in its oil market analyses, and those betting percentages shape the fragile perspective of the global economy.

Google included Polymarket's percentages in the Google News section, and removed them only after fierce reactions from media outlets. At the Golden Globes - here's a little bit entertainment - predictions from Polymarket were broadcast live, as an integral part of the broadcast. Market, baby, market, Trump would probably say. You can, of course, bet on whether he will utter this very sentence by the end of April.

The market swallows everything: matches and Palestinians, the living and the dead, wars and floods, attacked Ukrainian cities and the Golden Globes. Without distinction. And turns them into a lucrative business.

Or is it not that simple? No, of course not. Don't be Hayek. When, for example, bets started on Polymarket a few days ago on whether the pilots of the American planes shot down over Iran would be found alive or dead, ethics and hooves rose in the US, and the platform removed the offer with deep apologies. It turns out that there are limits to the free market.

The Polymarket team knows exactly where to draw them: tens of thousands of dead Palestinians are fine, for example, but two American pilots are still too many. Even earlier, journalists noticed an anonymous bookmaker placing serious money on the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro, just a few hours before Trump's action. NN earned $400 on the kidnapping of the president of a sovereign state.

Something similar happened just before the Israeli-American aggression against Iran, with profits of over half a million. The platform is clearly trading insider information from, as our media would imaginatively put it, unnamed sources close to the government. “The whole squadron is on Polymarket,” said an Israeli soldier who was caught making money on the date of the start of the 12-day war against Iran during questioning: “The entire aviation is betting.”

Emanuel Fabian, an Israeli journalist, recently reported to the police death threats from anonymous bookmakers who are asking him to change battlefield reports and adapt them to their bets. Meanwhile, economists are warning that the spillover of information from Polymarket to various world markets could have nasty consequences: Goldman Sachs' practice has opened the door to far-reaching manipulations, and the manipulations are clearly being carried out by those with vast sums of money.

For the rest, Polymarket's social networks are full of meme's, breaking news announcements, brutal jokes and similar catchphrases incel the poor from whom Trump's deregulation of the betting business is creating an army of gambling addicts.

Oh yeah, there's us. Watching all this from the sidelines. Waiting to see how a betting platform will reshape the way we get information and exactly how it will affect the global economy. So we're outraged. So we're worried. So we're critical. All while believing it will help. And will it, can it? Yeah. You can bet.